Wix Website Design: Advanced Tips and Tricks
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Wix Review
Find Out If Wix Is The Right Choice For Your Business.
Wix Review - The Best All-Round Drag & Drop Website Builder
Last Updated: 20/03/2022
Author: Tony Cooper
Wix Review
Wix Website Builder Review
Wix.com is a cloud-based online website builder that lets you create beautiful, professional and functional websites without knowing a line of code.
The companies growth has been remarkable. From its small beginnings in 2006, Wix passed 1 million users in 2009, passed 50 million users in 2014 and 190 million in 2019. As of September 2021, they have 210 million registered users, with 4.5 million fully paid-up subscribers.
That is phenomenal growth by anyone's standards, and with new technology, in the pipeline, there is no reason to suspect that growth will stall anytime soon.
The biggest compliment I can pay Wix is that after years of struggling with open source platforms like WordPress and Joomla, I took the plunge and built my digital agency using the Wix platform. I've not looked back since.
Yes, my reading friend, the very words you are reading on this page, and all the supporting creative assets, use the Wix website design platform.
Regardless of what so-called "SEO Experts" and WordPress aficionados would have you believe, Wix should be the automatic website design tool of choice for both layman and website design professionals alike.
At A Glance Features
Name: Wix.com Inc
Year Established: 2006
Websites Built: 77,000,000m
Trial Offer: Free Plan
Support Options:
FAQ
Livechat
Telephone
Pricing:
Basic £8 Pm
Standard £10 Pm
Advanced £15 Pm
Example Wix Image Gallery
Wix has its shortcomings, more of which I will touch on later.
However, those flaws are put in the shade by clear design superiority and the scene-stealing supporting cast of Wix Apps that enable you to build booking and reservation systems, take recurring payments, manage restaurant orders and stream and sell audio for example.
There are pros and cons to whichever software platform you choose, but after reading this Wix review, you should at the very least be able to discount it from your bucket list without wasting your time signing up for the free trial.
So, as they say, let's get into it.
Why You Should Use Wix
Anyone that has used WordPress or Joomla knows how difficult it is to produce something that not only looks good – but looks different from everyone else.
Templates for WordPress are freely available, but it always seems like the best ones get used repeatedly, and trying to make your site stand out from the crowd design-wise can be difficult.
If you don't know your CSS class from your HTML Div, then you'll unwittingly prompt an unending cascade of tweaks and modifications. You'll be destined to spend your evenings and weekends in a developer's twighlight zone.
The original WordPress developers conceived their software baby as a blogging tool, a quick way for users to express their thoughts without having to go through a mountain of code to do it. If your primary goal is to become a successful blogger, then you should use WordPress, no doubt about it. WordPress has the associated blogging tools required for producing a lot of content and critically, promoting it.
However, WordPress is severely limited as a medium to express yourself creatively through design, which is where Wix steps in and fills the space.
The ability to easily manipulate graphics and create show-stopping designs is where a Wix website excels and why I love it so much.
The Wix website platform uses a drag and drop interface, so you don't need to know any code at all, and you can make relatively complex designs – background videos and different background sections are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can create with Wix.
If you want to get creative and delve into the code, you can. Velo is to Wix as Liquid is to Shopify, so if creating custom events or applications is within your remit, you do have access to programming code in Wix.
With all that said, however, if you don't have a design thought in your head or your idea of being creative is to mix and match serif, and sans serif fonts on the same page, then you'll create a Frankenstein - because you can.
The abominations I created in the desktop publishing revolution prove that ambition is no substitute for effective communication. Just because you can animate your headline doesn't mean that you should do it.
Wix Overview
Are You The Right Wix Website User?
100% of the Wix reviews I've read are by people who have never used it themselves, always on sites made with WordPress.
They perplexedly use terms like "limited" and "beginner" as if Wix was some sort of placeholder for those with limited aspirations.
It's simply not true.
The fact is that anyone who can use a familiar software interface will be well at home with Wix. In the same way that you will not become a Photoshop expert or Excel wizard overnight, you will have to do some learning, but the focus is on the display and layout rather than the HTML, DIV, PHP and CSS.
Let's Dispel Some Common Wix Myths
Myth One: Wix Websites are For Beginners
Is Python a beginner's programming language? Is PHP for experts only? Is WordPress only for those serious about building an Internet business?
Everyone has to start somewhere, and the cost of starting in Wix or WordPress is very similar. You'll pay Wix to use their software and hosting platform, whereas you'll get WordPress free but still have to pay a hosting fee. Your final decision lies in what your goal is.
Although WordPress is "Free" there is an associated cost in keeping up with software development, applying patches, and keeping plugins up to date.
Many consumer verticals are well provided for in WordPress and Joomla with third party Apps for verticals like car dealerships, real estate and review websites.
eCommerce websites should be built in Shopify, Magento or another similar platform.
However, if your website does not need to be database-driven, then, generally speaking, Wix is the ideal solution for beginners and experts alike. It's a case of the right tool for the job.
Myth Two: Wix Websites Won't Scale As You Grow Your Business
The hosting architecture used by Wix uses some of the most advanced server sharing technology on the planet. Similar to Shopify and other cloud-based hosting platforms. Let Andrey Makarov explain it to you if you are interested:
Who Should Use Wix?
Myth Three: Wix Is Only Good For Small Sites
That's exactly the target market. Most business websites are small. The high-quality grass-fed organic beef supplier, the online cookery school and the Vinyasa yoga website have replaced the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
How big is big? How many pages do you want? Fifty pages seem like a reasonably big website which Wix will handle easily. One hundred pages would be no problem. Most small to medium business websites have a core of ten to twenty pages, supplemented by a blog.
Wix uses a standard header and footer, which repeat on every page. There are then reusable content containers, repeaters and other content management tools.
Remember that when you create hundreds of pages of content, you have to keep them updated. So there comes the point at which, for small marketing teams, it's better to improve the existing content than to keep adding more and increasing the maintenance overhead.
Several of the most successful marketing websites I know have twenty pages or less. The size of your website isn't as important as how you promote it.
Myth Four: Wix WebSites Won't Rank On Google
This used to be true but anyone espousing this theory in 2022 is sadly misinformed.
This is what Google's John Muller has to say about it:
“Wix is fine for SEO. A few years back it was pretty bad in terms of SEO, but they’ve made fantastic progress, and are now a fine platform for businesses. The reputation from back then lingers on, but don’t be swayed by it.
What they’ve done in recent years is really good stuff, including making it trivial to have a really fast site (as you see in the Lighthouse scores — admittedly, speed is only a tiny part of SEO).
If Wix works for them, and they don’t need more, there’s no reason to switch.”
Ease Of Use
How Easy Is Wix To Use?
The Wix editor uses a browser-based drag and drop interface, so there is no software to install.
You add new pages, folders and sub-pages to your website within the Wix editor.
Click on the element you want to change – text, images, videos etc. – and drag it to where you want it to be on the page.
If you're going to add an effect or alter the properties of the element you've chosen, then a panel will open up on the right-hand side of the screen with all the relevant settings.
Wix is incredibly easy to use, and if you are familiar with any standard software interface, you'll quickly get to grips with the Wix editor.
However, beginners often have their game thrown off by placing elements such as container strips or paragraph text on top of each other and accidentally hiding things, so there is a learning curve to the Wix editor as there is with any other software.
Gaining great Wix chops takes practice.
Using Wix As A Blogging Platform
There are advantages and disadvantages to using Wix as a blogging platform so let me run through these before we get into creating a website.
Disadvantages
1. The blog component is not a seamless integration.
You can't use a dropdown picker to choose a page URL to link to. You must manually find the external URL and copy and paste it to create a link.
It's not the world's end, but creating an internal linking strategy for SEO purposes is a lot harder exercise than it should be.
2. The text does not automatically flow around an image.
If you are used to automatically flowing your text around an image, then it seems strange that Wix does not support this. However, you can balance out your text and images to display nicely using strips and columns.
I built the blog display into the right column and then created the text to fill this space for exactly that effect.
Wix As A Blogging Platform
Advantages
1. Your blog will look beautiful
The huge variety of display options will give your blog a unique look. It can take a while to figure out your image aspect ratios to display correctly across all the different blog components. Still, once you've sorted that out, you can reuse your blog in various ways across the entire site.
2. Your blog integrates with Wix Ascend marketing tools
Want to send out a newsletter and feature your latest blogs? Even better, do you want to automatically email people when you publish a new blog? Both are great features of Wix marketing.
Embed your Wix blog in website pages like this!
Getting Started - Wix Templates
If you want to make something that looks fantastic, then Wix doesn't disappoint.
There are over 800 templates here in easy to find categories, and you could easily spend a couple of hours browsing through them to find some inspiration.
Templating and design are where Wix excels; you can look at the template on a PC, and then there is a "quick view" to see what it will look like on a mobile device.
Everything is straightforward, and simplicity is at the heart of everything Wix stands for. If you can't find something you'd like to use as a basis for your next project, I'd be shocked.
There are hundreds of examples of HTML5 websites created, and nearly all of them look fabulous.
In addition to the design aspect, using "drag and drop", you can put together a new website in a day and be up and running with the basics very quickly. Wix would be an excellent choice for people who run events or need to build a website where time is of the essence for that reason alone.
Wix Templates
Replacing Wix Template Images
You should be aware that most Wix templates rely on supporting images sourced either through the Wix media library or third-party image repositories like Unsplash.
To make these templates look great, you will need to be able to source or own the reproduction rights to high-quality images to replace the templated assets.
Wix will give you discounted rates to purchase single images from Shutterstock.
Wix Graphics And Image Manipulation
The way Wix handles graphics and its image manipulation capabilities are the reason we have come to the party.
The main image display highlights lie in the number of image galleries, sliders and carousel effects that you have at your mouse command.
The days of searching for gallery plugins and messing about with Jquery to get everything to play nicely together now seems like some far distant dream.
Building out image pages is now an exercise in restraint because it's so easy to overuse the many image gallery features that Wix offers. The galleries are simple to create and manage and they are a great way to showcase your work or portfolio.
Add images one at a time, or import an entire folder of images at once. Wix will automatically create a gallery and thumbnail images for each photo.
All of the elements in the gallery can be customised including the overlay and icons, texts, item style, scroll animations and expand mode.
Wix Graphics
Logo Design Gallery
Wix eCommerce Overview
eCommerce Functionality
At some unseen point over the past couple of years, Wix has managed to morph itself from mainly being average at everything with a few highlights sprinkled into the mix here and there into an all-star player that is great at everything.
Wix's eCommerce features are a case in point. There is no other eCommerce platform that offers the range of eCommerce selling tools that Wix does.
You can import and export your products to the Wix stores App and then reuse that content everywhere across your site.
So whilst I highlighted earlier the drawbacks of Wix's blogging platform, being able to embed relevant products to a blog post by simply dragging and dropping a container box might persuade you that it's worth sacrificing some basic blogging functionality for added style points.
As well as Wix stores, there are Wix Plans, Wix reservations, Wix events, Wix bookings, and if you still can't find the correct presentation method for your products or services amongst that list, then a search in the Wix Apps store will find what you need.
Wix also supports selling digital products.
Wix eCommerce
Wix Products Slideshow
Apps & Tools
Wix Apps And Tools
Another Wix high point. The App "after-market" is a massive community of developers building functionality into the product and making it stronger and more well rounded.
Over 300 Apps are available in the store, which allows you to add custom features to your website. Need a live-chat function? Want to send out a newsletter every week? Showcase testimonials?
In WordPress, you have loads of plug-ins available, but they are nowhere near as easy to plug in and use as this, and very often, you get conflicts with other plug-ins (Apps) that don't play nicely together. Wix solves all of this with its one-click install technology.
Wix also supports embedding code from other third party sources however this is one of the weakest features as all the code is entered using an iframe and so your display options are limited. I use this method to display the user reviews from Google which you can see on the home page.
Wix Plans And Prices App
10 Page Business
65£Every monthFor those who need a larger web presence- Hosting Included
- Free Support & Unlimited Updates
- Free Domain Name
- Blog & Contact Forms
- SSL Certificate
- Simple eCommerce
- SEO Basics
- Most Popular
eCommerce Starter
95£Every monthStart selling your products online- Hosting Included
- Free Support & Unlimited Updates
- Free Domain Name
- Blog & Contact Forms
- SSL Certificate
- Advanced eCommerce
- SEO Basics
Wix Plans
If you want to sell a plan with a recurring subscription payment then Wix Plans is the App you need. Setup your plans as I have done above by giving them a name and description and then fill in the highlights. What could be easier?
Remember to customise the emails associated with the plan details.
Once a user has signed up for the plan the recurring payment will be taken automatically (I use stripe payments) and an invoice sent by email to the customer.
Wix Reservation Booking
Wix reservations are a simple, effective way to take bookings and reservations online. You can set up a booking system for your business or service with just a few clicks.
Wix Reservations is perfect for businesses that take appointments, offer classes or workshops, or need to schedule resources. It's easy to use and gives you all the features you need to take bookings online.
With Wix Reservations, you can:
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Set up a booking system in minutes
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Accept payments online
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Send automatic confirmation emails
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Manage your calendar and bookings in one place
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Get detailed reports on your bookings
Wix Event Planning
The Wix Event Planning App helps you plan and manage your events. It offers a range of features to make event planning more manageable, including a calendar, to-do list, budgeting tool, and more.
With the Wix Event Planning App, you can:
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Create a calendar of events
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Set up a to-do list for each event
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Budget for your event
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Track RSVPs
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Share event details with guests
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Send reminders to guests
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Get feedback from guests after the event
Wix Ascend Marketing
A great Wix feature is the ability to import your Gmail account to kick off your email list and start sending email newsletters. You'll get three email blasts every month to 5,000 subscribers.
If you need more than this, you can subscribe to Wix ascend marketing, which will give you more emails and access to a ton of advanced marketing features like "triggered emails" and other advanced automation that help you create a professional marketing campaign.
Wix ascend is explained in the following video.
Wix Ascend Marketing
Wix SEO
It's no good spending all that time and money building a website if it won't appear in the search engine results.
Wix gives you granular control over the whole SEO process, and for beginners, there is a complete SEO wizard which will walk you through all the steps you need to take to make sure your new site is search engine optimised.
As I mentioned at the top of this review, Wix used to have a terrible reputation for its sites not appearing in search engine results but that's all been fixed and Wix sites have all the SEO tools you need to make your site rank properly.
Wix also provides custom code sections so that you can enter analytics tracking and other custom code if you need it.
Wix SEO
Wix Customer Support
On the one occasion I wanted to contact Wix support because of a problem I got a phone call from the USA within hours and the problem was quickly fixed.
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Phone support
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Social media support
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Community forum
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Email support
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In-depth knowledge base
Customer Support
Wix Pricing
Having worked as the front end developer on the Finning project to combine multiple country websites into one global entity I got to use Adobe Experience Manager which is designed for large teams and big corporations.
One of the things that struck me as I wrote this review was that at £9.50 per month for the unlimited package, Wix is superb value for money. That's one of the biggest reasons behind their success.
You get unlimited bandwidth and 10GB of storage which should be more than enough for any website that will go viral from day one. One of the hidden charges in standard low-cost hosting is that once you start exceeding bandwidth limits, you have to move up to the next level, but that doesn't apply to Wix
You'll also get a free domain name for a year which is a nice bonus.
Combo – £6.50 per month
Combo is the first step for those new to website building. You can create a fully customised website with no restrictions.
Unlimited – £9 per month
Aimed at freelancers and entrepreneurs, Unlimited is Wix’s most popular plan.
As well as everything you get with Combo, it gives you unlimited bandwidth and a generous 10GB of storage. You can also upload one hour of video content to your website.
VIP – £19 per month
The VIP plan is a step up from Unlimited, designed to support growing businesses.
Wix Pricing
Summary
Wix Review Summary
Those of us who have been working in the website design industry for the past fifteen years have always considered Wix to be a second rate website design option.
With its adverts plastered everywhere on the free sites created and the abysmal search engine optimisation performance, Wix was always the butt of all SEO jokes.
However, Wix has put its vast war chest to good use and, after rectifying the inherent deficiencies, has now improved the product beyond all recognition. The ugly software interface developed into a beautiful piece of UX engineering.
The recent launch of "Wix Fit" gives you an idea of where the company is heading with its software aimed at gym owners, personal trainers and studios. Not even the behemoth that is Shopify can match Wix for eCommerce specialisation.
I've given you the overview, and as I said in my opening few paragraphs, I built this website using Wix, and I've never looked back.
The time saved from fixing CSS errors, messing around with database tables and keeping the script kiddie hackers at bay has been tremendous.
I now focus on the more essential things like generating more user content.
Over to you to go and create your digital masterpiece!
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